Writing an email on your iPhone or iPod touch with a lot of jargon? Tapping out a text in another language? Here's how you can prevent the overbearing auto-correct feature from slowing you down.

A bilingual reader of our Aussie cousin, Lifehacker Australia, found that by typing out a "z," then touching and dragging to back up the cursor behind it, he could write as far outside the constraints of his native land's language as he wanted. Typing behind the Z leaves auto-correct unable to guess what word you could possibly be forming—"Restaurantz?" it asks, with a resigned shrug—so it leaves you alone. Works on any iPhone/touch app that features spelling correction, actually. You could, of course, just turn off Auto-Correction in the Settings/General/Keyboard menu, but this method provides a quick tweak that leaves the finger-waving for the real typos.